A quick description and demo of this ingenious pump.A hydraulic ram is a clever device invented over 200 years ago that can pump water uphill with no other external source of power except for the water flowing into it and there is a way to take advantage of this normally inauspicious effect for a beneficial use.
source.image: Practical Engineering
The ram pump is an ingenious way to take advantage of the properties of fluids. We all need water for a variety of reasons, so being able to move it where we need it without any fancy equipment or external sources of power is a pretty nice tool to have in your toolbox.
A ram pump is basically a water trebuchet. Most of the water that passes through it does not go up. Most of the water just gets dumped out as waste. But in the process, the energy in that large mass of waste water gets stored and transferred to a much smaller volume of water that can thereby be lifted above the original level of the water source. The ram pump works by creating a pressure surge that develops when moving water is suddenly stopped through the use of capped PVC pipes and check valves.
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Water is heavy and is it rushes downhill through a piping system, it is suddenly stopped by a capped PVC vertical tube. The check valve slams shut, essentially pushing the up a smaller pipe that comes off of the main pipe. This smaller pipe is what carries the water uphill against gravity with nothing more than the energy created by the flowing water. . When a certain pressure is reached the inlet valve closes and the water in the reservoir is forced out by the air pressure through different valve. The air has to be replenished from time to time as it dissolves in water. The pump uses the energy from the flowing stream.
